


Saudade

by Far_Beyond_The_Universe



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Death, Character Does Not Stay Dead, Female pronouns for Pidge, Langst, M/M, Pidge - Freeform, Pining, Regret, The Castle of Lions, i think you;ll get the idea though, klance, klangst, suicide letter, suicide mentioned, the timeline of where it fits in the show isn't exact, time-travel, veronica is mentioned like once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 05:45:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16034204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Far_Beyond_The_Universe/pseuds/Far_Beyond_The_Universe
Summary: This was inspired by a post on tumblr by tyrezlangst where they asked for a story where older Keith has to go back in time to convince younger Keith to stop Lance from killing himself.





	Saudade

**_saudade_ **

_noun_

_a deep emotional state of melancholic longing for a person or thing that is absent_

_from: Portuguese_

 

Keith remembers the day Lance died. He remembers every day without him. Almost 300 days. Almost a year. He doesn’t remember nearly enough days _with him_. He’s spent his year looking for a way to bring him back, to return him to himself. He left Voltron behind, he left the Blade behind, he left himself behind. Not that now, after the war, it mattered much. Voltron was a figurehead, a statue, not a war machine, not anymore.

But less than a month ago Pidge showed up at the door to the temporary room he was keeping on a planet not far from Olkarion. She pushes her way into his room with a grunt and sets up her computer. If he was being honest he didn’t realize she was even still in space; he’d figured she’d gone home to the rest of her family.

And he was going to kick her out before she looked him dead in the eye and told him she could help him get Lance back.

Today they are ready; Keith has less than twenty minutes to accomplish his tasks. He’s thought about it all: what he’s going to say, how he’s going to say, where he’s going to say it.

And before that, for even longer, he’s thought about the exact moment he needs to say it.

Because Pidge figured out that while she can’t resurrect Lance she can send Keith back in time to a specific moment and prevent everything from happening. They debated whether he should confront Lance or whether he should speak to himself. Eventually he won the argument: as badly as he wanted to see Lance again, alive, he knew he had a better chance of having him back in the present if he could convince a past version of himself that he needed to take better care of the boy. Keith had never been good with words—he’d particularly never been good with speaking to Lance—so this was his best bet.

“You’re sure this will work,” Keith is strapping a helmet-like contraption to his head. Pidge said she based it off the designs used for the memory-sharing machine they’d all used back when they were beginning to figure out what it meant to be paladins.

“For the last time, yes. You have to stop thinking of time like it’s a circle. That’s just what pop culture has made everyone think. Time is a line,” she held up her hands, a piece of wire pulled taught between them. “And you’re jumping from one point back a little, temporarily. Ideally, you’ll cause a ripple that will be positive and then Lance will be back, the way it’s supposed to be.” She eyes him harshly, “You can do it, right. You can fix this.” It’s not really a question.

Keith nods. He directs her to punch in a date and grips the arms of the chair he is in. She’s promised that this won’t hurt.

And then she presses the button.

Well she didn’t lie about it not hurting but he doesn’t have any time to gather himself because on the top of one second he’s in his proper time, a year after the war has ended, and the bottom of the same second he’s five years ago standing on the Castle of Lions again.

Keith is dizzy, he needs to catch himself. He clicks his watch; he has twenty minutes and then he’ll be gone out of here, back in his own time. Being back in the Castle in absolutely surreal. He never thought he would see it again, never quite realized all the emotion that came with a place he had temporarily called home. But he pushes the memories aside because he doesn’t have the time. Lance doesn’t have the time.

Today—the day Pidge has sent him back to—is not an important day. Nothing much happened today. But it’s around the time when he realizes things must have started happening for Lance. Or at least around the time when Lance started to give up on fighting his inner demons. And it’s one of the few days Keith remembers being back on the Castle between Blade missions.

He hurries through the halls. He has no idea where anyone else is, he just knows where he is, and he’s in the training room like he always is. So many regrets, Keith thinks to himself as he goes down the familiar passages. He glances at his watch—four minutes have already passed and his heart quickens—and pushes into the training room.

There’s a moment of complete vertigo as he watches himself in action. Younger-Keith doesn’t notice him at first and Keith loses another minute trying to orient himself. And then Younger-Keith sees him. He watches his own eyes widen, watches the Bayard drop and collapse into itself, and then watches himself go for his knife. But Keith is quicker than his past self and he rushes himself, pushing his mothers blade out of his hand, and pushing Keith against the nearest wall. Their faces are close.

“What the quiznak!” Younger-Keith struggles against him.

“Stop! Stop, you need to believe me. I’m you, from the future.”

Younger-Keith narrows his eyes but stops struggling to tense himself. Keith knows himself and kicks Younger-Keith in the knee, causing the younger version of himself to untense in surprise.

“This isn’t the weirdest thing you’ve come across, or will come across, so just shut up and listen.”

“Prove you’re me,” Younger-Keith demands.

Keith is losing precious seconds but he looks himself dead in the eyes and says: “We find our mother. Soon. And we forgive her; which is what we’ve always wanted to be able to do.”

Younger-Keith is still. There are tears in rim of his eyelids but he does not let them fall. Keith hopes there are no ramifications with this.

“When?” the question is a whisper.

Keith shakes his head and lets go of his younger self. “I don’t have much time and I have to tell you something. Something you can’t tell anyone. But you have to do something about it. You _have_ to.” Keith puts as much emotion as he can into that. He puts his heart into that. What’s left of his heart after Lance died, at least.

He checks his watch. He has thirteen more minutes. 

“Don’t speak, just listen. Okay? Listen:

“You care about Lance. I know you do. _We_ care about Lance. A lot. And we think he doesn’t care about us. It doesn’t matter if he cares about us because in four years, once this war ends, he kills himself because he thinks no one cares about him.”

Lance’s sister had been the one to find his body. He’d overdosed. In his letter he’d said it was because he didn’t want to look dead on the outside. In his letter he’d said that he loved them all and that it was okay if they didn’t love him back. In his letter he’d said he was done being their burden and that he hoped they didn’t mind if he made a few last requests about the funeral. In his letter he’d said he had thought about killing himself earlier but that Voltron and the universe needed him and earth needed him, but now no one needed him so he knew it was okay. In his letter he’d left a note just for Keith and he’d told him that he was sorry he hadn’t been a better friend and that he was sorry for the stupid rivalry but that he wasn’t sorry that he’d never had the nerve to tell Keith how he felt about him because he didn’t want to put in that position. Not when Keith finally had a family and was happy; he didn’t need someone like Lance being a bother.

Keith had gone to the funeral and he had wondered if maybe it was a bit of his own funeral, too, because he felt like he was burying a large part of what made him _him_. He was burying his heart and Lance had died and been happy that Keith hadn’t known how he felt.

He’d been so angry in the aftermath. How could Lance have done this? To him? Not put that on him? Now he was left, _alone!_ , to mourn someone he loved who loved him back but neither of them had said a thing. Now the paladins were left to fall apart because, no, they didn’t need Lance to form Voltron but by god they needed Lance like they needed the blue sky or the green grass. Lance had always just _been_ and now Keith, and everyone, had lost him. He’d lost a color from the rainbow, a constellation from the heavens, a fucking piece of his heart.

But then he’d become dedicated and hopefully, now, it was paying off. If Younger-Keith would listen to him.

Which it seemed he was. Because his own wide, violet eyes were blurring with shock and tears.

Keith shook his younger self. “Listen. Listen! You need to do something. Anything. Make sure Lance knows he matters. I’m not saying confess; I’m not saying anything dramatic. Keep tabs on him, make sure he’s not alone or lonely. Ask him how he’s feeling. I couldn’t so you _have_ to. Keith!”

Younger-Keith shook his head. He knew he was overwhelmed.

“He-he kills himself?” Keith sees his younger-self’s eyes full of confusion.

“Keith, please. _Please_.”

And he looks at his watch again. Six minutes left.

“Keith, I hate to put this on you. But I know you can take it because I can take it. I know you can save him. It feels harsh now, it feels scary, but if you don’t do this…”

“But… will it work? Will it be enough.”

“It will have to. Don’t worry about the time travel or the math Pidge figured it out. _Please_ ,” and Keith’s voice is so small. Four minutes left.

And the training room doors burst open.

“Keith, here you are!” The voice shatters through Keith’s whole body. He turns, feeling frozen, and there he is.

Brown hair tasseled from air-drying. Blue eyes, bright like the ocean. Shit-eating grin. _Alive_.

“Wait… are there two of you?” But Lance is barely able to finish his sentence before Keith is throwing himself at the younger boy and pulling him into a tight hug.

_Lance._ Does he say it aloud? 

Lance is stiff in Keith’s embrace; shocked, maybe.

Two minutes left.

Keith pulls far enough away so he can see Lance’s face clearly. He maps it into his mind because he doesn’t know if this will work. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see him again.

One minute left.

“You are so important. You matter so much Lance. Lance, Lance, Lance. You are not a bother or a burden. You matter, Lance. You matter.” The words Keith had wished he’d been able to say before it was too late. Or, most of them. It wouldn’t be fair to either his younger self nor this younger version of Lance to spill his heart and confess. Not now; Keith had fucked his own chances over. This was his last chance.

Thirty seconds left.

“Keith?” Lance is so confused, Keith can see it in his eyes.

Ten seconds left.

Keith leans close again, breathing Lance in.

And at the top of one second he is holding Lance in his arms, the chilly and sterile training room around them, his younger self trying to gather his mind around the fact that Lance kills himself if things keep proceeding the way they were.

At the bottom of the same second he is in a warm bed, covers wrapped around him, holding Lance in his arms. And Lance is holding him back, sleeping softly against Keith. Head tucked under Keith’s chin, heart beating against his chest.

A sob is caught in his chest and Keith pulls Lance closer.

His memories are at war. He remembers Lance dying. He remembers the letter. And the funeral. And going back in time.

But he also remembers the first date he takes Lance on. He remembers introducing him to Krolia as his boyfriend. He remembers Lance and him tussling in bed, kissing and wrestling in turn, naked as the day they were born, and then Lance landing on top of him and declaring that they should get married now that the war is over. And he remembers the small ceremony and exchanging rings.

“What’s wrong?” Lance has woken up and has concern written in every inch of his face.

Keith pulls his husband closer and breaths Lance in. “Nothing at all, my love.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know this type of story has been done before but I'm really happy to put my own twist on it.
> 
> I also wanted to mention: suicide is always hard for me to write or read about because I’ve dealt with it personally in the recent past years. I’m getting help with it (which is super important: if you have feelings of killing yourself you need to talk to someone. In the states this is the number for the national suicide prevention hotline 1-800-273-8255) and actually confronting it through fiction (the medium I am most comfortable with) has done a lot to help me personally.
> 
> Suicide is a serious thing and should not be taken lightly.
> 
> That said, I do hope you have all enjoyed this piece. If you want to find me on tumblr I'm @farbeyondtheuniversethings (https://farbeyondtheuniversethings.tumblr.com/) and I'd love to chat!
> 
> Have a suggestion for a fic? Send me an ask there or ask here in the comments.


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